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The launch of Microsoft Surface marks the beginning of a new technology category and a user-interface revolution. Surface, Microsoft 's first surface computer, provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural hand gestures, touch and physical objects. Surface computing breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology. Something similar to this was presented a

longacre (1090157) writes "Popular Mechanics takes the Microsoft Surface system for a hands-on video test drive. To be announced at today's D5 conference, the coffee-table-esqe device allows manipulation from multiple touch points, while infrared, WiFi and Bluetooth team up to allow wireless transfers between devices placed on top of it, such as cameras and cell phones. Expected to launch before the end of the year in the $5,000-$10,000 range, the devices might not make their way under many Christmas trees, but will find the insides of Starwood hotels, Harrah's casinos and T-Mobile shops."

VelvetsFan writes "There are an abundance of new search engines, each pioneering some innovation in search technology. Read/WriteWeb has a list of the top 17 search innovations that will prove disruptive in the future. These innovations are classified into four types: Query Pre-processing; Information Sources; Algorithm Improvement; Results Visualization and Post-processing. While some of these innovations are present in various Google properties, they are either missing or available only in limited form in the main search page.

The article posits: it is very likely that in the future, the simple "search box" on the Google front page will hide a variety of specialized search engines behind it. On the other hand, trying to cram in an increasing number of these sophisticated features has the potential to make the overall architecture for Google (or any mainstream web search engine) very complex and difficult to change, so the trade-offs will present an increasingly difficult challenge."